From Peter and Hiro -- Ha!

I always said I liked Han...

Star Wars Horoscope for Scorpio

You are a powerful character. You tend to be possessive and lusty - which explains your greedy nature. You feel threatened when people try to order you around or control you. You are prone to suspicion and jealousy - but your resilience and passion get you what you want. Star wars character you are most like: Han Solo

What Is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

[FM - IJ] April Topic: Regret

I don't.

I daresay that upsets most people. There seems to be a culture of regret that clings to the human conscience. The idea of moving forward, of living for today, and not looking back evidences coldness to most people. How can you do "bad" things and, once you realize the error of your ways, not regret them? I would ask, in reply, what good does regret do? Who does it serve? What does it accomplish for the future, and how does it hinder the present, if I steep myself in regret for mistakes past?

Have I made them? Oh, yes. I've never claimed to be infallible, only indestructible. I've made quite a few, in truth. There are things that, if I had them to do over, I likely would do differently. There are things I would change. Things I would say, or would not say.

But regretting those mistakes is a useless venture and a waste of time. You make a mistake, you learn from it, and you move on. Regret serves nothing but the idea of a beleaguered conscience that drags you back constantly into the past. How can you move forward if you stay in the past? And how could I ever move forward...If I regretted even all of my major mistakes, let them weigh on me and my conscience, have you any idea how frozen that would make me? I would have centuries of regrets constantly chasing me, nipping at my heels. Words I didn't say when I had a chance. Lives I failed to save. Lives I saved that weren't worth saving, in the end. Questions I never asked. Ideals I acted on. Ideals I failed to put into action. Loves lost. Loves I never claimed. Loves I ran from because they seeped too deeply beneath the guards I keep up. Wars I fought. Wars I avoided. Children I... Secrets I kept. Secrets I revealed.

I could drown in regret if I allowed myself to. If I let even one slide into my consciousness, it would open the floodgates and paralyze me. Centuries of regret, centuries of mistakes...it is a terrifying thing to contemplate.

Best to not, then. I learned that lesson long ago. No regrets, no matter what. Everything is something to learn from, good and bad, and everything shapes you and moves your forward into what comes next. When life has no foreseeable ending, regret can pile up until there is nothing left to life but that feeling, that mountain that buries you alive under its weight.

So, I don't. If people think that makes me cold, so be it. I survive. I move forward, as best I can, in a world and a way no one I've known can do more than imagine. There is no room left for regret.

[xposted to changehistory here and at IJ.]

[WM] 33.6 -- Doppelganger

In point of fact, Adam's not sure what to do with the boy. He's the same age, now, that Adam was when he stopped aging, younger than Peter by nearly two years, and the similarity is even more uncanny. They could be twins, until he starts to age, and that thought--the aging one--he finds both fascinating and repulsive. It would be interesting, to see how he ages, and at the same time, he finds himself wanting to retard the process for as long as possible, almost immediately considering daily injections that make Sark give him a slight look of horror. He's quick enough to accept the offer of healing, should he need it, though, Adam notes. He supposes in his line of work, that would be useful.

The line of work provides a way in, an idea of what to do with him until he figures it out fully. He has skills Adam lacks, knowledge Adam needs of the world political climate--the ever shifting alliances and enmities that make up a global world he has not participated in for decades. What he lacks in knowledge of these times, Sark knows with an intricacy that is impressive. He's intense and serious about it as well, sitting up late with Adam tracing patterns around the globe in detail that the older man has to admire.

That he admires other things feels exceptionally narcissistic, but he can't help the curiosity, nor, does he think, he can be blamed. It isn't often you find something new at his age, and this is definitely new. His fingers itch to explore more thoroughly, tracing over skin and finding out if the similarities end there, or run deeper inside of them both. The look he gets when he ruffles the boy's hair, however, makes him keep a more circumspect distance. There's a darkness there that possibly surpasses his own, and though he wants to dance with it, pull it closer, the boy could be too valuable to alienate him on a sensual whim.

So he contents himself with glasses of exorbitantly expensive wine, talking late into the night about information that would make Adam's objectives--at yet undefined--clearer, sharper, and easier to achieve. Sark is quick to discourage the flare of interest Adam shows in Rambaldi, with an almost snarl on those lips that makes Adam wonder if that's how he looks when someone upsets him, too. The discouragement only spikes his interest though, much to Sark's impatient looks and pointed comment about Adam not needing any more doses of immortality. The weapons, Adam argues, have their own uses, and Sark mutters something about always finding the ones with death and destruction and world domination aims, which amuses Adam to no end, given the business the boy is in.

And so they argue, night after night, in person and via encrypted email and phone calls, and if a plan still remains out of Adam's grasp about the boy's future, he decides more and more each day that somehow it has to be tied to his own. The concept of everyone having a twin somewhere has never hit so perfectly before, and he cannot believe it is anything but fate that has brought them together, so perfectly matched in skills and aims, each complementing the other. What to do will come in time. It always does. Until then, bedeviling the boy has its own rewards, and if he plays his cards right, he might find his own in time.

[MTM] April Prompt: What is your favorite fairytale and why?

Is it completely and utterly vain of me to say the one I'm in? I mean, honestly, I suppose it is, but when you have lived something, you tend to find yourself either attached to it or repulsed by it, or sometimes both. Nothing else can have the same flare of intensity inside of you. How can Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty compare? There's a draw, I'll admit, to Beauty and the Beast, at least occasionally, but even it seems almost too moralistic and rife with patterns and imagery I've never seen truly working in this world, or at least in my life.

But The Legend of Takezo Kensei? There are dragons and sword fights and princesses and mad deeds of strength and daring and boldness in the name of justice and salvation. It's a story to capture any boy's imagination, no matter how old he is.

The truth of it is not so pretty, of course. There was no such man, really, not encompassed in one, alone. There were two, at odds and struggling, one to force fate, the other to resist, then one to give in to it, and the other to destroy. No literal dragon, though hearts were ripped out aplenty. No happy ending for the princess, either, though not as dire a one as the dragon had planned for her, perhaps. It is laced with betrayal that never saw the page, and the fact that frozen waterfalls are a bitch to climb, and that a broken neck, even though it heals, fucking hurts gets conveniently left out. Loss and heartache and shattered illusions get left out, as does the path of redemption followed by a fall. The hero never wavers from his purpose, never doubts, never cries. The princess isn't a false, lying bitch. There is no mention of a boy from the future who nearly wrecks it all and changes the story forever, teaching the rogue to be a hero and inspiring him to heights of villainy unmatched in the prose of fables. The jealousy, the unrequited love, the dark shadows that mingle and mix and stretch out through time are all left out. She'd never tell it so, of course. Never cast herself in any such light, and it is because of her the tale survives at all.

There is no path of grey, no moral questioning in the story. It's all so easy, so well laid out. Trials are overcome, a princess is won, a victory for good is accomplished which is celebrated by all. Japan is saved by Kensei's valor. There is no mention of a burning building, no promise of vengeance whispered. The roles do not reverse, and the heroes do not dance and fall out, split apart by words that cannot be said, sublimated needs and desires.

It is a story, and not even one that reflects real truth. But the seeds are there, as they are in all such tales, and they are the seeds of my life. They are what was planted, the beginnings of what was to come, the heart of so much that grew after.